


All I See is the Shape of Q

by Kakushigo



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: I take my liberties with how everything works, M/M, Other, The trailer gave me feels, and I applied those feels to Qcard, esp the Q Continuum & fixed points, very melancholic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-13 21:13:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18948772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kakushigo/pseuds/Kakushigo
Summary: It is hard to describe what it is like to lose someone you are not sure you loved, but you know loved you dearly.  It is even harder to find a reason to keep living, knowing you will never see them again for whatever afterlives you are destined too are not the same ones.In which Jean-Luc is introspective and a bit sad.





	All I See is the Shape of Q

**Author's Note:**

> This was more poetic in my head.

Ever since Jean-Luc returned from the stars, he gently turns visitors away.  He talks little to the few insistent and contents himself with fading from history.  He tends religiously to the endless vineyard, that which his brother and father before him tended.  It is all he has left these days, not even the stars can sooth what part of him misses so dearly.

The vineyard is sown with the blood and bones of a creature who considered themselves akin to a god.  It was watered by the tears of rage of its orphaned child. No blessed or curse rests upon the fallow ground, but upon the soul of its tender.  (If the elder Q was mischief, the younger one was rage. Jean-Luc might have overcome his hesitance around children, but q was not a normal child.  Janeway's amused stories of the two of them painted a different picture then what Jean-Luc knew of them. But the image of q, standing in the door to the villa while a violent storm shattered the French countryside is not one Jean-Luc will easily forget.  Their eyes had not reflected the lightning, but rather brought it forth. If anyone else had known about the occurrence, they might have considered Jean-Luc lucky to survive the encounter. Jean-Luc knows q's revenge is much more subtle than that. After all, the only thing Jean-Luc has ever feared is eternity.  And now he must face it alone.)

The mission had been one Jean-Luc had not been supposed to return to, but love can make even the most powerful take to bended knee and give all that they have for the preservation of that which they love.

("If you go," Q told him seriously, dressed in the regalia of a Starfleet Admiral, "you will not return.  Some things are beyond even me." Q has always looked out of place, but never more then now as he stands in a Starfleet uniform in the middle of an aging vineyard.

"If I do not go," Jean-Luc asked softly, already knowing the answer, "how many will survive?"  Q does not answer. Jean-Luc goes. It is his deep surprise to safely return to spacedock, until he gets back to the vineyard and knows the paid price of his return.  It is easy to agree to a price that is your life, it is harder to realize someone else had paid in theirs.)

The wine the land gives forth tastes like benediction, betrayal, and blasphemy all rolled into one.  Jean-Luc does not drink the wine.

Standing among the grapes after it has rained means the wind rushing through the leaves sounds like a teasing nickname ("Mon capitaine," Q had always greeted him, long after he had ceased being a Captain.  Yet it never felt like an insult.) but there is never anyone there. The vines always yield though, often bearing crops regardless of the season or how well Jean-Luc has tended them. Sometimes, the grapes are an unnatural ruby red, and Jean-Luc could swear their juice is blood.  Other times, they're pure crystalline white and the juice they yield the same color. Jean-Luc tries not to think about it too much and named the wine it produced Ichor. If thinks too much, he might remember how he insisted Q was unable to feel love or true affection. Something had driven Q to trade their life for his.  If he had any doubts about what Q felt for him, q had dispelled them in their rage. It was humbling and terrifying to know something like a Q could still be affected by such 'base' emotions as love. And more then that, that Q had felt enough of it to trade their life for the life of one human among the cosmos. And so Jean-Luc lives on, because there’s nothing else he can do.


End file.
